Kristof comes home

Rali and Kristof came home from the hospital on April 11, 2000, both healthy and happy. Kristof was asleep when he came through the front door, so we decided to put him to bed, still in his traveling clothes. The crib looked small when we bought it, but with a five-day-old Kristof in it, it looked enormous.

I was lucky enough to take a few days off from work to show Kristof around the house. We spent a lot of time getting to know each other like this. This was on April 12, when Kristof was six days old. His dark hair mostly fell away, leaving a part-blond, part-bald head.

We're parents for the first time, so we had to figure out things for ourselves. We found that when Kristof got agitated, one way to calm him was to hold him so that he could hear our heartbeats. This photo was from April 14.

Here are Rali and Kristof on April 14. Rali says, "I felt thin again after the birth, but this was just compared to the pregnancy. After this photo, I went out for a long walk for the first time, while Rich stayed home with Kristof."

April 16 was a beautiful spring day in Sofia, so we decided to take Kristof out for his first walk. We strolled around the neighborhood for a while, then stopped in an attractive garden restaurant for lunch. We learned that Kristof loves the motion of the carriage: he usually falls asleep within a few minutes of leaving the house.

We had lunch in the restaurant, and Kristof also enjoyed his first restaurant meal. He wasn't fussy when he was so young, but has since decided that he doesn't like drinking from a bottle. So when he's hungry in public, Rali finds a semi-private place and flips a blanket over her shoulder. It's all very discreet, until Kristof burps, of course.